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Slowly Melting Euphoria :
A Report On The Third Annual Soiree
Of Multidimensional Art Mongers
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　This years third annual soiree of Multidimensional Art Mongers (M.A.M.) was a testy, sordid affair. Attendees had a difficult time remaining level headed due to recent schisms within the group and in the formerly close knit community of Multidimensional Artists. Florentine Flabberwright confided, “I’m not sure the cohesion of the group will gel back together enough in time for a fourth soiree. Besides, the bones of the artists are getting pretty lean, and we mongers will need to move on to a new movement that still has some meat and vitality left.”
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Nathaniel Brunswick who was to give the after dinner speech, along with several other members, had been kicked out for issuing a new manifesto stating that Multidimensional Art was fiscally and theoretically bankrupt. These communiques were not readily embraced by the majority of mongers who had invested large sums of money in the development and subsequent marketing of astral galleries.
Those who remained at the soiree argued about the intellectual vacuity of Rupert Firedrakes morphogenetic installation over bowls of oyster and crawfish gumbo. Located in a shantytown just outside the Land of the Dead, and nearly indistinguishable from the glowing grub worms who did make a home there, his piece was not seen as being a work with a future, and the mongers worried about being able to sell his newer work, or get it placed in shows. His few defenders pitched back insults at his attackers with the snide aplumb typical of the aesthetic elite.
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Blexie Pharish was however praised for her idiosyncratic use of sixth dimensional contours. Often considered the wunderkinder of the Multidimensional Art Movement (M.A.M.), her newest public work was regaled as a masterpiece of dream glamour. It functioned by worming its way into random selections of the dreaming populace, picking up on the fragmented detritus of sleep. The constructions succubus-enhanced astral slime also trailed off bits of juicy gossip into the dreams of others, seeding whole cities and towns with nefarious pheremones, one night at a time. No one knew how long the etheric thought form would live on. While it is true that among her peers, this work was roundly applauded, critics have claimed her reliance on sexual motifs is a crude tactic used to draw in an audience who would otherwise have nothing to do with her. Others have said she has just not grown into the full power of her voice yet, and given time her pieces will mature to encompass a broader range of themes.
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The mongers, while concerned with aesthetics, were more concerned with markets, platforms, scaling, and sales. One monger summed up the feelings of the entire room with his question, “But how can we make a profit off this? “Indeed one of the problems long associated with M.A.M. (and here I mean the Art Movement as opposed to the mongers) has been the difficulty faced by cultural workers trying to make a sale, much less get a comission, or a grant. For the most part non-tangible, they create goods which exist only on the imaginal realms and in the subtle planes of reality. Some contend these « planes and realms » do not even exist, that Multidimensional Art is the ultimate form of artistic rebellion and mockery; the gallery, the museum, and even street art had all been co-opted by capital at large, so the only pure form of creation left to those who did not want their work appropriated by conglomerate scum bags were those which did not produce physical products. Such is the history of imaginary art in a nutshell.
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A group of those who still hold these concerns protested the soiree for the entire evening, attempting to boycott the sale of astral works, heckling mongers and potential buyers alike as they arrived for the evening. They tried to roust them via agitprop messages printed on toilet paper covertly installed in the bathrooms at the Ivory Tower Hotel where the event was housed. Most of these protesters had been former members of S.M.A.C., or the Society for Multidimensional Art Concepts. Svaegnir Thorsson, the Icelandic founder of the group was also the first member to quit. He states, “My associates and I feel that the original aim of S.M.A.C. has been perverted by posers and pretenders, due to the mongering of the art. Our prime directive was to assist humanity in escaping the vapid materialism and haughtiness of the contemporary art scene. Modern man is also overly stimulated and so we tried to craft astral experiences which required the ability to slow down the mind in order to perceive them. Our methods were used to fight everything from Attention Deficit Disorder and the tooth decay caused by addiction to sweets. Our events and creations were designed to withstand the negative impact commodification has had on art movements throughout history. However, the mongers have found a way to capitalize the Astral Plane. They have colonized our dreams. That is why I’m here now, engaging in activism to educate the general public on the dangers of art mongering. I’m also conducting intense research on new tactics for resisting the corporate encroachments on every aspect of life. To this end I’ve started a new group, the Society for the Manifestation of Anarchist Chaos, whose initials are also S.M.A.C.”
Elmer Well’s, a co-founder of the original S.M.A.C. was also in attendance with the hopes of finding a patron among the mongers. It didn’t take long for him to warm up to the subject of his former colleague Thorsson. “Svaegnir is a fraud. He’s a failed painter himself, and can’t help but get irritated when he views someone else’s success. And he has this really bad habit of self sabotage, where if things start to go well for him, he thinks he doesn’t deserve it, goes on a Brenivin drinking binge and starts mouthing off at the people he’s closest to. I couldn’t take it anymore, and when he broke up with me, and broke away from the group, I stayed behind to keep S.M.A.C. operational. I’m still dedicated to the original cause of Multidimensional Art. If I can make a little money on the side, to feed back into the work, is that such a bad thing? Does that make me a sell out?”
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Anonymous informants on the inside of the original S.M.A.C. claim Elmer himself is a fraud, that his most lauded works were stolen from Svaegnir after he’d left them abandoned in the Abyss. They don’t resent him for this, claiming the practice dates all the way back to the Readymade School founded by Saint Duchamp in the early years of the Twentieth Century. The panel of experts formed to look further into the matter at the soiree is the subject of heated debate among the mongers, as their findings will be decisive in terms of projected values for the Wells/Thorrson portifolio. Among the mongers, the initial findings of the experts has been the cause of a slowly melting euphoria.
